


Twenty Hours

by mrhiddles



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 11:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1225066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He has to want to wake up,” he tells her finally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Hours

**Author's Note:**

> My otp to rival my love for Thor/Loki is Eames/Arthur and it's taken me four years since the movie came out to brave writing fic for them.  
> There will be longer, better fic in the future. I really do love them and need to write things.

“He’ll never wake up. Not from this.”

“You have a mighty dreary outlook on things as of late, Ariadne. How sure are you he won’t ever awaken?” Then as an afterthought, “There are things out here he wants. Needs.”

“People you mean?” she asks, needlessly. Her tone implies enough.

He looks up to see her cross her arms, looking away towards where the slumbering Arthur lies with a tube secured to the skin of his wrist, the length of it disappearing under the sleeves of his shirt. He barely moves save for the rise and fall of his chest. Still so even and steady, like it’s normal, like he hasn’t been under for _so long_.

“Can’t you just give him the kick? Wake him up yourself? I’ll do it if you can’t.” She throws her hands in the air and starts toward the PASIV, too eager to rip Arthur from his own mind.

He snatches her wrist away with quiet words easier than any manner of actually grabbing her would.

“Have you ever asked a man to kill himself?”

Her hand falls away, hesitating. She looks startled. “No. No, Eames, I haven’t—”

“There is a lot to say about a man who takes that gun he thinks up and puts it to his head. He could be lost in that dream, forever, and yet he is still so ready to die. Even if they’ve never shared a dream. If they’re unaware of the Somnacin pumping through them,” He walks over, angling the case away from her with one swift movement of his hand. “He doesn’t know if he will wake up, doesn’t know if there is a reality beyond the one he’s grown to accept death in. He might have a new job, a new family, a new lover.” He closes in on her, slouching just barely. “He might even have kids, and yet he puts that gun to his head, or that knife to his throat, just begging to wake up to something they don’t quite trust.”

The hesitation in her is clear, even if he wasn’t standing so close. He crosses his arms again.

The way she looks at Arthur then was like a physical push to do the same. But he keeps where he is, refusing to lose his focus. Like he ever could. It had always been difficult around Arthur, sleeping or otherwise.

“He has to want to wake up,” he tells her finally.

Brown eyes flutter shut, open towards the ground. She looks lost, like a child, and he wonders how he got caught up with these people.

Eames clears his throat and finally allows himself to glance at where Arthur sleeps.

It’s been twenty hours.

“Arthur doesn’t.”


End file.
